It's hard to imagine Tesco without Terry Leahy. But it could so easily have happened, as one of my colleagues was startled to discover this week. He was attending the Swedish government's Food Chain conference ­ not the sort of place you would expect to hear such a tale. But that's what happened. And our source is impeccable. Anyway, we were told that when El Tel decided to leave the Co-op to follow his then girlfriend down to London he applied for two jobs ­ one with Tesco, the other with an aluminium foil supplier. Being a solid sort of chap he got second interviews for both. But El Tel really wanted the job selling kitchen foil. Sadly, he was only offered the post in Cheshunt and the rest, as they say, is history. Talking of decisions that have changed history, our man in Sweden spotted a product called Jaap being sold in most stores. It looked like a Mars bar and tasted like one too. And, he discovered, Mars had actually bought the recipe for Jaap to launch its eponymous bar. Fancy that! The foot and mouth crisis did overshadow proceedings at the agricultural university of Uppsala and the organisers stopped farm visits. The story the media folk made the most of was the disappearance of the animals that usually grazed around the conference venue (they had been removed for their own safety.) Finally, my colleague would like to thank Paul Rozin from Pennsylvania University who enraged the food luvvies with a speech that injected reality and humour into the conference debate. Paul: it was a joy to see how angry they got. {{COUNTERPOINT }}

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